SHB 2019 – Liveblog

I’ll be trying to liveblog the twelfth workshop on security and human behaviour at Harvard. I’m doing this remotely because of US visa issues, as I did for WEIS 2019 over the last couple of days. Ben Collier is attending as my proxy and we’re trying to build on the experience of telepresence reported here … Continue reading SHB 2019 – Liveblog

The Changing Cost of Cybercrime

In 2012 we presented the first systematic study of the costs of cybercrime. We have now repeated our study, to work out what’s changed in the seven years since then. Measuring the Changing Cost of Cybercrime will appear on Monday at WEIS. The period has seen huge changes, with the smartphone replacing as PC and … Continue reading The Changing Cost of Cybercrime

Bitcoin Redux: crypto crime, and how to tackle it

Bitcoin Redux explains what’s going wrong in the world of cryptocurrencies. The bitcoin exchanges are developing into a shadow banking system, which do not give their customers actual bitcoin but rather display a “balance” and allow them to transact with others. However if Alice sends Bob a bitcoin, and they’re both customers of the same … Continue reading Bitcoin Redux: crypto crime, and how to tackle it

When safety and security become one

What happens when your car starts getting monthly upgrades like your phone and your laptop? It’s starting to happen, and the changes will be profound. We’ll be able to improve car safety as we learn from accidents, and fixing a flaw won’t mean spending billions on a recall. But if you’re writing navigation code today … Continue reading When safety and security become one

Configuring Zeus

We presented “Configuring Zeus: A case study of online crime target selection and knowledge transmission” at APWG’s eCrime 2017 conference this past week in Scottsdale Arizona. The paper is here, and the slides from Richard Clayton’s talk are here. Zeus (sometimes called Zbot) is a family of credential stealing malware which was widely deployed from … Continue reading Configuring Zeus

Privacy with technology: where do we go from here?

As part of the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2014, I spoke at the panel session “Privacy with technology: where do we go from here?”, along with Ross Anderson, and Bashar Nuseibeh with Jon Crowcroft as chair. The audio recording is available and some notes from the session are below. The session started with brief … Continue reading Privacy with technology: where do we go from here?

Don’t shoot the demonstrators

Jim Graves, Alessandro Acquisti and I are giving a paper today at WEIS on Experimental Measurement of Attitudes Regarding Cybercrime, which we hope might nudge courts towards more rational sentencing for cybercrime. At present, sentencing can seem somewhere between random and vindictive. People who commit a fraud online can get off with a tenth of … Continue reading Don’t shoot the demonstrators

A Study of Whois Privacy and Proxy Service Abuse

Long time readers will recall that last year ICANN published the draft report of our study into the abuse of privacy and proxy services when registering domain names. At WEIS 2014 I will present our academic paper summarising what we have found — and the summary (as the slides for the talk indicate) is very … Continue reading A Study of Whois Privacy and Proxy Service Abuse